Monday, May 14, 2012

RCotD #180

Mindbreak Trap - 2UU
Instant - Trap
If an opponent cast three or more spells this turn, you may pay {0} rather than pay Mindbreak Trap's mana cost.
Exile any number of target spells.

Initial Thoughts:

The one card that broke storm decks. The one card that deals with everything. The one card that counters everything "uncounterable".

I have a japanese version of this card, and I am a proud owner of it. I mean sure, you can compare it to Counterspell, the most basic of it's kind--which was actually deemed "too powerful" to ever be reprinted again.

So the next runner-up would have been Cancel, but it is deemed too weak. Dissipate seems to be the card that everyone holds to for a 3 converted mana cost counterspell. But for 4 mana costs? Last Word? Cryptic Command? Quash? By the time you hit 4 mana cost spells the utility of good counterspells practically skyrockets. That's why this spell costs 4. Or at least most of the time it costs 4. It exiles spells instead of putting them in the graveyard, it can exile multiple spells (which is one of the reasons why Double Negative was printed.) and sometimes it can be free.

Depending on the format, this is either a good counterspell or the best fucking sideboard in the game. Yes, it counters Thrun, the Last Troll and Banefire.

Your opponent is playing a Tendrils of Agony storm deck? Dragonstorm? I do feel kind of bad that a single card shuts down an entire archetype for the meta, but I guess that just goes to show how powerful this card is. 5/5